Featured Domains

Goldberger on Toys.com Team, eToys.com Buyer Remains Mystery

I spent several hours yesterday reading through bankruptcy documents before breaking the news about a major domain name auction in Delaware on February 4. Since then I’ve read more documents to try to piece together the major winners at the auction.

The two high profile winners — Faculty Lounge Partners and Eagle, LLC probably won’t ring a bell with you. It appears they were set up to buy domains in the auction.

There’s a familiar name on the Faculty Lounge Partners purchase documents for Toys.com: Ari Goldberger. I have sent an e-mail to the domain name attorney by the same name to confirm his involvement and will update this story later. You can see the initial qualified bid document submitted before the auction here (pdf). [Update: See comments for direct connection.]

As for the buyer of eToys, ePregnancy, Baby Universe and Dreamtime Baby, that’s harder to figure out. Eagle, LLC is a generic and short name meant to make it hard to track down the owners. I looked up the company’s LLC filing in Delaware and the listed agent is a corporate filing mill. Eagle, LLC basically assigned all of its negotiating power to its attorney, Jonathan Korn of Blank Rome. The name of Eagle, LLC’s assistant secretary, Biana Fuks, is on the document but Google searches didn’t pull up anything interesting. I didn’t find any obvious clients on the Blank Rome web site that may be represented.

But it’s obvious Eagle, LLC is backed by major players. Most bidders submitted a low offer of $100,000 or so to start, which required only a $10,000 deposit. Eagle submitted a $1,000,000 offer, requiring a $100,000 deposit. It also deposited the remainder of the $1,000,000 in an account at Blank Rome.

The ideal buyer for eToys and ePregnancy is Toys R Us, which also has the Babies R Us brand. The purchase included customer information, which adds significant value. But I am unable to link the Eagle to Toys R Us. You can review the Eagle qualified bid document here (pdf).